Friday, December 17, 2010

Motif 17: Fantasia Fan

This is Teri TATBit's Fantasia Fan. It's been finished for a while, but I'm in awe of Teri Dusenbury and it took me a while to work up the nerve to ask for permission to show a picture. She kindly said yes when I asked.

It's almost completely rings (lots of split rings), and some pieces are done separately and attached as you go. It took several tries, cordonnet cotton and a bit of blood to finish this. It's worth it though. The design is gorgeous; the only piece of tatting I've ever felt like framing.

Perhaps the blood needs explanation. Below is my unpicking tool. It's a tapestry needle stuck in some polymer clay. Normally, when retro-tatting 2-3 stitches, it's comfortable and safe to use. However, when retro-tatting dozens of stitches (while cursing your own inability to count), the unpicking gets ...vigorous... Puncture wounds are the result.

3 comments:

Double WOW! First for the MAGNIFICENT job you did on Teri's fan! I've often wondered how many tatters have even attempted it. I would LOVE to try it, but I admit I'm intimidated.

Second, how wonderful to have Teri compliment your work! She is a fantastic designer. I am in awe of her beadwork using tatting as her base, but I also love to look at her early tatting designs. She definitely brought the split ring out of hiding and raised it to new levels. She also has a vintage pattern library on her blog that she worked tirelessly to copy and share. And she has many posts about the history of tatting and the influential designers who kept tatting alive and whose names we must never forget.

I also have a 'picking' tool encased in something, and I plan to post about it. Yours is unique, set into in polymer clay!

About Me

I learned to code when C was the language of choice and compiling was done on a command line. Nowadays I write with whatever language or platform I can get paid for. If it's got an IF statement, I can code for it.

My mother taught me origami when I was 2. Since then I've never stopped tying to make things out of paper, cloth, yarn and just about anything I can get my hands on. Lately I've started teaching kids (my own and other people's) how to make stuff.